WIkiData is an idle name - we could frankly probably do just as well simply expanding and utilizing WikiSource. This is, after all, what WikiSource was largely intended to do before it became Project Gutenberg Lite.
The Encyclopedia of Life video is a good model for what I'm talking about. Essentially, my feeling is this: we have a ton of good content. Not all of it is encyclopedic content, but a lot of non-encyclopedic content is very, very good. While other people are trying to design shiny widgets like EoL and then fill the content in, *we have all the content already*. Our problem is that we have what is largely a mediocre-to-shitty interface for the content.
I suspect we are one of the few, if not just about the only project that could actually make an interface like this work. We have the content to make it more than just a gimmick. We have the contributors to actually organize the data and tag it usefully. I don't see where anybody else could do this.
-Phil
On Feb 15, 2008, at 4:12 PM, quiddity wrote:
The name Wikidata is already taken, by the group of projects that aim to provide reusable static and dynamic facts. So for example, Wikidata will have a variable for {{population of Spain}}, that can be added to any Wikimedia project, but only needs to be updated in one location (or could be tied into an official U.N./Spanish xml feed for complete automation) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata I don't know how far along any of the experiments are, or how close we are to getting it integrated to English Wikipedia, but I'm aching for it like nothing else...
As for expandable/tangential content sections, I adore the way Encyclopedia of Life's demo looks. Click the play button at http://www.eol.org/home.html for the "novice-to-expert slider" about halfway through. I think that's the lofty target we should aim for.
Quiddity
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l